The rumors that made the rounds in autumn 2021 sounded too good to be true: At the Brandenburg plant of the electric car manufacturer Tesla from the USA, which had a reputation as an anti-union company, there were works council elections even before production started started normally at all.
The disillusionment followed a few days later: the initiative came from Tesla employees, who were described as “close to company management”. The responsible trade union IG Metall was taken by surprise, reported the press spokesman for IG Metall Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony Markus Sievers: “The date is not ideal, since there are hardly any production employees at the Grünheide plant.” In fact, there were far fewer at the time of the election meeting than half of the planned Tesla workforce. Tesla wants to eventually produce up to 500,000 cars per year in its first European factory with around 12,000 employees, currently there are almost 3,000.
Black eye for IG Metall at Tesla
Even the date chosen, at the end of the month, is at least suspicious: the works council election took place on Monday, February 28, 2022, i.e. at the end of the month. If it had taken place a day later, on March 1, 2022, everyone who started on September 1, 2021 could have voted. “This shows that you don’t want to allow everyone to participate in the works council elections,” explains Sievers. This would mean that very few employees (19 works council members) would represent a (then) large workforce for at least two years and at most four years, and not only that: only those who had been employed for at least six months were allowed to stand for election and vote. Almost only management employees were entitled to vote. The interests of employees in production will therefore inevitably be underrepresented.
IG Metall, which had not managed to nominate its own candidates, nevertheless celebrated last week’s works council election as a “great success for co-determination and the democratic work culture in Germany”. However, the whole thing looks more like a black eye for the union and could have turned out even worse for them: Only almost 50 percent of the votes are said to have been cast on the employer-friendly list “Gigavoice”, so they have to cooperate with other lists. In fact, the whole thing seems orchestrated and also Tagesschau, rbb and others reported on the “works council election without production”.
In any case, Tesla in Grünheide had a few reasons to celebrate last week: in addition to an employer-friendly works council, Tesla received the building permit last Friday. So far, only generous special permits had been granted. Cars may only be produced in Grünheide if an operating license has been issued. Environmental and citizens’ initiatives protested against the construction from the start, but could not prevail. They worry about water shortages in the region, which is already dry anyway, if Tesla uses up to 1.4 million cubic meters per year in the future. 160 hectares of trees have already been cleared. And the working conditions on site have also been criticized: As early as September 2021, “Business Insider” reported on construction workers who worked up to 14 hours a day and were paid below minimum wage.
Union busting strategy: works council policy from above
It sounds paradoxical at first, but you often hear that companies use works councils for themselves. There is some evidence that Tesla has succeeded in a works council coup with the forced elections and that they have taken the union by surprise. The works council policy from above is a well-known union busting strategy to prevent union work, which IG Metall could also be familiar with from its own history: “In the 1950s in West Germany, employers tried to use the works councils to undermine the unions and their influence. In 1954 there was a big strike in Bavaria, which IG Metall lost in the end because it didn’t have power over the works councils,” explains Elmar Wigand from the “Action against Labor Injustice” initiative, with which he has been fighting union busting for years. “At that time, the bosses of the metal industry concluded company agreements with the works councils and thus riddled the collective wage agreement and ultimately wore down the strike.”
It is also possible that Tesla wants to use the works council as a soft location factor. In Germany there has been a shortage of skilled workers for some time, which means that companies compete for workers and not vice versa. A company with co-determination is more attractive than one without, especially in eastern Germany where only 36 percent of employees are represented by a works council. In western Germany it is at least 44 percent (source: Hans Boeckler Foundation). Lieferando recently chose a very similar strategy and is now making working conditions a competitive factor among delivery services. Their Germany boss Alexander Linden explained the change of course in the Handelsblatt: “Now we are the first major provider to end the fixed-term employment contracts, thereby further expanding our model of fair employment relationships. We consider this additional protection to be correct and up-to-date, and are thus setting a new industry standard.”
But at IG Metall, you don’t verbally mess with Tesla for the time being. It is welcomed that Tesla would create jobs in Brandenburg, explains Markus Sievers. He also did not see the premature establishment of the works council as a Unionbusting strategy: “No one puts any obstacles in our way.” So far, IG Metall has mainly been advising on “wages, working hours, working conditions, contracts , all sorts of things. We are visible and Tesla employees are always welcome if they have questions or need advice. This is also used a lot.” Sievers cannot provide any information about the contracts themselves, because Tesla is ahead of the game here too and probably contractually obliges the employees to maintain secrecy. The only thing he can report is that wages are currently around “20 percent below the collective agreement”. However, they do not want to proactively push the fight against individual contracts, lack of transparency and higher wages at the moment: “If the employees would like a collective agreement, then they have to work for it and IG Metall would also support it.”
Tools of the IG Metall against Unionbusting
But it will take more than advice and support to take on a company like Tesla. It needs open-minded, more conflict-oriented union work and organizing. IG Metall in Grünheide could get advice on this from their Hessian Verdi colleagues, for example, who have been messing with Amazon for years. In 2011, Amazon’s warehouses were essentially a non-union zone, with 79 union members for every 3,000 workers. At that time there was already a works council that was also remote from the union. It was only when Verdi decided to gradually build up employee representation in the company, instead of speaking on behalf of the employees from outside and negotiating with the company about wages and a potential collective agreement, that things got moving.
On April 9, 2013, Amazon experienced its first strike in the company’s history – and many more since then. The collective agreement is still pending here, but more than 500 Verdi members and their willingness to go on strike have wrested a lot from Amazon, such as higher wages and more breaks. There are similar cases at IG Metall itself. The IG Metall organizing project “More will” explains on its website: “The basic idea behind development is to be proactive and always one step ahead of the employer. If necessary, we use opportunities to exert pressure and escalate conflicts.” Another strength of union organizing is that it involves workers in the struggles from the start, thus building power from below rather than establishing proxy politics which the responsibility is handed over to the trade unions. IG Metall has already won a number of battles with this tool, including against union busting.
Sievers did not want to provide any information on whether IG Metall wants to use organizing in Grünheide in the future and how. One can only hope for future workers in Tesla production that IG Metall’s reluctance is a tactical maneuver, because the workers need a fighting force at their side against the American carmaker group.